The high temperature battery is a new concept; however, it is founded upon previous technology such as the chemistry of borax, soldering, techniques for joining aluminum to copper, and the effect of adding ashes to a battery electrode. A brief description of this previous technology is presented here as background for the present invention.
From the foregoing Technical Field references about borax and electrolytes and from a U.S. Borax Technical Datasheet IC-1a, some brief characteristics of borax are: ". . . When heated above 144.degree. F. borax melts in its own water, swells to a frothy mass, and when fully dehydrated at increasing temperatures it fuses to a clear glass", "molten borax acts as an acid toward metal oxides", "the affinity of fused borax for metallic oxides renders it extremely useful as a flux", "the electrical conductivity of molten borax is less than that of other molten salts", and "the anhydrous (lacking water) form of borax melts at 742.degree. C."
The following is from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1965, Volume 20, pages 939A-939B, under the heading: Soldering.
In the preferred embodiment of this invention, which uses aluminum anodes and copper cathodes, an aluminum-wire-to-copper-wire splice is made at interconnections between cells. Such electrical splices that will not self-heat are desirable and can be obtained by using brass as an intermediate metal as noted in the following excerpts from an article in the IEEE Spectrum magazine of May 1984, page 17.
The addition of powdered, vegetable-growth ashes to an electrode to enhance battery performance is described in the following excerpt as the addition of ashes to the electrode cuprous chloride to surprisingly improve battery performance. This excerpt is from Patent Pending by Richard L. Gausewitz, published by Devon-Adair in 1983, pages 56 and 57 as follows: